Month: September 2014

“Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus, being powerful in the Scriptures…This one having been taught in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things about the Lord,…proving through the Scriptures Jesus to be the Christ.”
—Acts 18.21,22,33

This man was so moved by the Holy Spirit of God and he so loved and devoured anything spoken by God. He became powerful in the Scripture, the written words that God has spoken from eternity into time. O for men and women so thirsty for God! Who have embraced the Son of God, the Holy Spirit and anything God is speaking. O for those who will hear the calling of God and respond, and forsake the temptations of sin and the so-called “treasures” of this world, and detach their hearts from them, that they may be attached to God and God’s purposes and plans! Respond, you who have ears! Have ears to hear when that Precious One speaks and calls you aside unto Himself! Father God let it be so I ask in Jesus’ Name.

All by the grace and mercy and peace of God. In loving tenderness and genuine affection toward all.

—

Captured

I don’t want to see you captured by the world
when its face can seem so beautiful
don’t let them tell you it’s OK
to keep a little for your own
it’s a trap that some will never overcome
Oh, you’ve been set free
with blood that cries mercy
Oh, at such great cost
the Father’s very Son

“Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply “things.” They were made for man’s uses, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.”

“But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul.”

“Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and “things” were allowed to enter. Within the human heart “things” have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.”

“This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets “things” with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns “my” and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.”

“Our Lord referred to this tyranny of things when He said to His disciples, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.'”

…

“If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham’s testing was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one he did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have been different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.”

“Father, I want to know You, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from You the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that You may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then will You make the place of You feet glorious. Then will my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Yourself will be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”